SNIA Supported Solutions Forum Bears First Fruit

Six members of the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) today announced the first major interoperability initiative registered under the SNIA Supported Solutions Forum (SSF) to enable data mirroring between geographically dispersed sites for backup/recovery, and to connect remote Storage Area Network (SAN) islands to create a single fabric.

Hitachi Data Systems, Inrange Technologies Corporation, IBM, LEGATO, StorageTek and VERITAS Software today announced the completion of interoperability testing of two jointly- developed open SAN solutions designed to extend storage area networks and offer multiple options for protecting and enabling enterprise backup/recovery of mission critical applications.

"Enterprise customers are looking for scalable, interoperable solutions for their heterogeneous storage environments," stated Eric Sheppard, research analyst at IDC. "SNIA SSF solutions represent the commitment of participating companies to work together to provide truly interoperable solutions, not just vendor hype. This announcement provides customers with a proven option for implementing high availability SANs for business continuity."

The SNIA SSF was organized in 2001 to solve customer interoperability problems and to offer customers more choices and flexibility. "Supported Solutions" are multi-vendor interoperable storage networking solutions that are supported by the participating vendors working together for the benefit of end users. The solutions are developed by the participating vendors to meet customer requirements for scalable, flexible, interoperable, cooperatively supported storage networking infrastructures that maximize their investment in storage networking technology.

AIX, Sun, and Windows-based servers configured with access to all storage targets, operating across both disk and tape data zones.

Mirroring of DB2 and Oracle databases to maintain data availability and provide backup/recovery of IT applications.

Cooperatively supported by each company, this registered solution set also formally satisfies the SSF criteria of being a "Competitive Solution Set", as it contains competing disk storage and competing tape storage. The solutions also represent a "Companion Solution Set", as the two solutions offer the choice of vendor tape backup/restore software as differentiators.

"As data growth continues to explode and increasing demands are placed on existing storage networks, customers require proven, interoperable storage solutions that enable reliable methods of enterprise backup and recovery," noted Warren Smith, board member, SNIA SSF Committee. "As users continue to implement and expand SANs, mirroring provides a cost-effective method for both backup/recovery and for connecting SAN islands into a single fabric. Today's announcement is evidence of vendors working together for the good of the customer to provide solutions that can be deployed in the real-world to solve business problems and enable customers to maintain highly available storage networks."